ABSTRACT
How many students in the classrooms of America experience something similar—either the under-teaching or over-teaching of novels—and how many experience the same fate with Animal Farm itself? It is impossible to know, but what we can say pretty firmly is that the allegory is still taught; in fact, it was reported in a survey as the ninth most frequently taught text in the state of Arkansas in 2009, the most recent comprehensive study of a single state’s literature curriculum (Stotsky, Goering, & Jolliffe, 2010). It is a staple of the literary canon and is most often approached as allegory of the Russian Revolution, the dominant mode of teaching Animal Farm follows the dominant interpretation of the text. Although this isn’t surprising, these facts combined to prompt the authors to seek new and engaging ways of studying the text.
